(a) Technical Field
The present application relates to a liquid crystal display device, and more particularly, to a liquid crystal display device having a thin thickness and a reduced size of a bezel.
(b) Description of the Related Art
A computer monitor, a television, a mobile phone, and the like, which has been widely used today, require a display device. An example of the display device may include a cathode ray tube display device, a liquid crystal display device, a plasma display device, and the like.
A liquid crystal display device is one of the flat panel display devices which have been most widely used currently and includes two sheets of display panels in which field generating electrodes, such as a pixel electrode and a common electrode, are formed and a liquid crystal layer interposed therebetween. A voltage is applied to the field generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the liquid crystal layer and determines an alignment of liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer and controls a polarization of incident light by the generated electric field, thereby displaying an image.
The liquid crystal display device does not emit light itself and therefore needs to have a light source. In this case, the light source may be an artificial light source which is separately provided or natural light. Here, the artificial light source needs a light guide plate (LGP) by which the emitted light may reach the entire display panel with uniform luminance.
The light emitted from the light source is incident on a side surface of the light guide plate and is emitted to an upper surface and then reaches a liquid crystal display panel. The liquid crystal display panel is configured of a display area and a non-display area. In this case, it is suitable to dispose the light guide plate to enable light to reach the entire display area. For this purpose, a size of the light guide plate is generally designed to be larger than the display area.
Recently, technologies for reducing a thickness of the liquid crystal display device and a size of a bezel have been developed. However, there is a limitation in reducing the thickness of the liquid crystal display device and the size of the bezel due to the light guide plate.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.